A HOAX bomb threat sent from a St Paul’s student’s email account to the school yesterday was not a muck up day prank, according to staff.

Above: the St Paul's Warragul campus sign. Source: school website.

The Anglican grammar school’s Warragul and Traralgon campuses were put into lockdown yesterday morning after “unpleasant email messages” were sent from a compromised email account.

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“We were alerted that a student account was compromised and email messages were sent from that account to members of the school community,” a spokesperson said on social media yesterday.

“Many of these messages were most distasteful and upsetting in their nature and reference was made to the possibility of a bomb threat in some messages.

“Our emergency management procedures and critical incident response plans were therefore enacted and police at Traralgon and Warragul were contacted.

“A number of safety actions were put in place at the advice of the police. These included holding students at evacuation points upon arrival at school until the School grounds were declared safe by the police.

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“Our initial investigations indicate that the hackers had no connection to the school community. We are certain that all family information and data has remained secure.

“We are all most disturbed by this matter and will be thoroughly investigating how such an event was possible and seeking advice as to how to improve the security of our system.”

School activities had returned to normal by 10:30.

Responding to allegations made by another news publication, a spokesperson today said “the incident was not related to ‘muck up day.'” Muck up day is a traditional celebration held by Year 12 students on their final day at school, during which they dress up and often perform pranks.

“Our Year 12’s had a wonderful, incident-free day of celebration at the end of last week,” the spokesperson said.

“We now know that it was illegal access to one student’s email account that allowed ‘trolling’ to occur and this resulted in unpleasant email messages being sent to members of our community.

“This matter is now in the hands of the police. There was no breach of the School’s IT security and no staff, student, parent or community data was accessed.”